(Jerusalem) The United States announced Thursday that it had completed a temporary pier on the coast of the Gaza Strip, intended to allow more aid to be delivered to the territory ravaged by seven months of war and whose main entry points have been blocked for over a week.
Thursday morning, American soldiers, “supporting the humanitarian mission of delivering additional humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in need, secured the temporary pier at the Gaza beach”, indicates on X the US Central Command (Centcom) Joint Command competent American, particularly for the Middle East.
“It is expected that trucks loaded with humanitarian aid will begin to dock in the coming days,” continues the Command, specifying that the aid will be handed over to the UN which “will coordinate its distribution in Gaza.”
In Washington, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper of Centcom announced the arrival of “around 500 tons (of humanitarian aid) in the coming days […] distributed among several boats.
Controlled in advance in Cyprus, the aid will be distributed “rapidly” in Gaza once disembarked via this jetty, he explained, adding that “thousands of tons of aid are in the pipeline” and heading towards Cyprus . “There will be no American soldiers on Gaza soil,” he insisted.
This pier, with an announced cost of $320 million, according to the Pentagon, was initially scheduled to be completed on May 2. The project was announced in March by President Joe Biden, to compensate for the restrictions imposed by Israel, historic ally of the United States, on the land delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip.
The British Foreign Office announced on Wednesday that a ship loaded with aid had left the Cypriot port of Larnaca bound for the facility.
He must unload around 100 tonnes of temporary shelter for the inhabitants of Gaza, 2.4 million people, around 70% of whom have been displaced by the war, in a territory already overpopulated and under siege for seven months.
It is the UN, and “more particularly the World Food Program, which will distribute the aid on the ground”, confirmed during a press briefing a spokesperson for the Israeli army, Nadav Shoshani.
The navy and infantry troops are supervising this “humanitarian operation”, he added without further details, stressing that aid was entering the Gaza Strip at the same time by road.
On Wednesday, more than 200 trucks entered Gaza, via the new Erez-West crossing point and that of Kerem Shalom, loaded in particular with flour and fuel (76,000 liters) and “we will transfer them to the World Food Program to supply organizations and bakeries across Gaza,” he said.
Israel launched an offensive on the Gaza Strip in response to the bloody attack on its soil by Hamas commandos and its allies on October 7.
International aid, strictly controlled by the Israeli authorities, was already arriving in trickles, but its entry into the Gaza Strip is now largely hampered at the two main crossing points – Kerem Shalom from Israel and Rafah from Egypt.
On May 7, the Israeli army seized the Rafah crossing point on the Palestinian side, through which all the fuel essential to the operation of Gaza’s infrastructure and hospitals passed –– deprived of electrical power since the start of the Israeli offensive – and humanitarian logistics.
Since then, Egypt has refused to coordinate the delivery of aid with Israel through Rafah, with the two countries blaming each other for the blockage.
Closed for several days at the beginning of May after coming under Hamas rocket fire, Kerem Shalom is officially open, but humanitarian organizations say they cannot collect the aid sent there, due to lack of fuel and due to surrounding fighting.
The UN and NGOs are not circumspect about the scope of the artificial port, arguing that it cannot replace the delivery of aid by land.